-- remarked that "since central bank intervention in the currency, bond, equities, and commodity markets has exploded over the last few years, we don't really know what the market price of anything is anymore."

Now Ben Davies, CEO of Hinde Capital in London, has put intellect, data, and graphs to work in the same vein in a presentation made last month at the Value Intelligence Conference in Munich, a presentation titled "Seeking Value in a World of Financial Repression."

Davies concludes:

"Unfortunately the criticisms leveled at capitalism's supposed failings are not a function of failed free markets but of state intervention in the supply of money. The failing of the banking system is the product of meddling in the true or real rate of interest which has distorted all pricing mechanisms in the production of credit, resource availability, manufactured goods, and services. This has been a global phenomenon. ...

"The repressive nature of finance today deters us from observing true prices that signal to us the true time preference of individuals to make purchases or sales and hence their assignation of value for assets.

"I may sound more like a philosopher or even a political reformer than an investment manager, but I make no apology. For me to achieve my fiduciary duty of protecting my clients' money I must protect its value first and foremost. Until such time as the monetary system resets or a new monetary order appears that fosters price and hence stability in the value of our numeraire, then I will have to fight what I see as infringement in free markets to perform their basic and fiduciary responsibility, which is price discovery. A true price discovery will enable value to be representative of buyers and sellers, where one can chose of one's own volition to reject or not the value offered."

Thus Davies echoes the British economist Peter Warburton, whose 2001 essay, "The Debasement of World Currency -- It Is Inflation, But Not as We Know It" --

-- perceived that the primary purpose of Western central banking had become to deprive the world of what he called "a stable numeraire," a constant measure of things financial. Of course that's what the gold price manipulation scheme is all about.

Davies' presentation is posted in PDF format at the Hinde Capital Internet site here:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- With its latest surface diamond drilling program at its 100-percent-owned, formerly producing Blackdome gold mine in southern British Columbia, Sona Resources Corp. has discovered a potentially high-grade gold-mineralized area, with one hole intersecting 13.6 grams of gold in 1.5 meters of core drilling.

"We intersected a promising new mineralized zone, and we feel optimistic about the assay results," says Sona's president and CEO, John P. Thompson. "We have undertaken an aggressive exploration program that has tested a number of target zones. Our discovery of this new gold-bearing structure is significant, and it represents a positive development for the company."

Sona aims to bring its permitted Blackdome mill back into production over the next year and a half, at a rate of 200 tonnes per day, with feed from the formerly producing Blackdome mine and the nearby Elizabeth gold deposit property. A positive preliminary economic assessment by Micon International Ltd., based on a gold price of $950 per ounce over eight years, has estimated a cash cost of $208 per tonne milled, or $686 per gold ounce recovered.

The independent assessment, prepared by Tetra Tech, evaluated a base case of an open-pit mine (with a mining rate of 111,500 tonnes per day), an on-site concentrator (with a milling rate of 32,000 tonnes per day), and an initial capital cost of $863 million. The project is expected to produce (in concentrate) 1.959 billion pounds of nickel, 2.058 billion pounds of copper, and 7.119 million ounces of platinum, palladium, and gold during a mine life of 37 years with an average strip ratio of 2.57.

The financial highlights of the preliminary economic assessment, shown in U.S. dollars, are as follows:

Prophecy Chairman John Lee says: "We are pleased with the preliminary economic assessment results. The numbers indicate that Wellgreen is one of most exciting mineral projects in the Yukon. The company is drilling to upgrade and expand the resource base. The infrastructure is excellent as the project is only 1,400 meters in altitude and 14 kilometers from the paved Alaska Highway, which leads to the Haines deep seaport. Discussions are under way with support from local stakeholders regarding permitting and logistics."